Layman

Well, I also offered my personal experience as a law student and attorney. But, then, I am a biased, conservative sources as well.

I would not accept such a source as unbaised. But that does not mean I would not accept, or consider, such a source at all.

Big difference.

Of course, if you are really interested in policing unsupported asserts, you should not that no one has offered any evidence for their claims about Bush, Clinton, Reagain, or anything else for that matter.

Layman

Thank you for your clarification.

Fine fine. Distinguish in any meaningful way.

Good for you.

It is inaccurate to compare Bush to Roosevelt when the distinguishing outrage about Roosevelt's attempt to "pack" the Court was his attempt to enlarge the number of Justices and then appoint them all himself.


[quote[]A court historian, whose life and business are the dull minutiae of the court, will be supersensitized to such a term as "packing". The term has already passed into the political vernacular of both conservatives and liberals, and the common usage is well understood. That is the usage that was in play here, in this thread.[/quote]

Actually, the "usage" was to use "pack" the Courts and then compare Bush to Roosevelt. Which is misleading because Roosevelt's attempt to "pack" the Court outraged Congress and bothers historians because of the way in which he did it.

Yet you perpetuate the tangent as much as possible? When you seldom comment on these topics at all unless I am posting here.

The comparison to Roosevelt was charged and unfair. I called him on it. If he wanted to clarify that there were important differences between what Roosevelt did and what Bush is suspected of intendning to do, then I accomplished my limited purpose.

copernicus

Layman, you are shaping up to be a fine lawyer. You are splitting hairs over the phrase "pack the court", which everyone else understood perfectly. That expression is used all the time nowadays, but it is almost never meant to be synonymous with "increase the number of justices". As I pointed out, Roosevelt did pack the court, as he ended up appointing 8 of the 9 justices anyway. Your entire argument is a red herring.

The comparison to Roosevelt was absolutely fair. All I said was that he wanted to "pack the court as bad as Roosevelt did". You have not even bothered to refute my assertion, but to carp on a strawman definition of the phrase. Like Roosevelt, Bush will quite likely succeed in packing the court with people who favor his political bias. The ABA was known for its fairness. Right Wing ideologues did not like that fact, so they simply declared the ABA biased and proceeded to impose their own ideology on judges without any pretense of fairness.

Sauron

Glad we both agree that you overstated yourself. Even though you can't directly admit it, for fear of ego collapse.

No, it isn't. copernicus' comparison was made upon the basis of intent and willingness to go to extremes to get the job done. Not upon the mechanics of how Bush plans to achieve this goal. FDR was willing to bend the rules and basically screw people to get what he wanted. Dubya appears to have that same streak.

None of which refutes my point: since the time of FDR, the term "pack the court" has already passed into the political vernacular of both conservatives and liberals, and the common usage is well understood. That is the usage that was in play here, in this thread. I'm not really interested in what point of titillating minutiate might get an obscure court historian riled.

Your semantic quibble here is equivalent to the difference between a computer "hacker" and a "cracker". People who engage in such activities prefer to be called "crackers", since that's what they're actually doing: cracking into a system or a mainframe. "Hacking" is a totally different term, that (inside computer science) usually means "to hobble together a temporary and probably half-assed fix for a bug". But since the term "hacker" has already passed into the common vernacular, that's what everyone understands - regardless of how the usage upsets the purists in the cracker/hacker community.


I find it amusing to:

1. see you hang your entire argument upon a semantic non-point, while ignoring an otherwise worthwhile post;

2. watch you defend your quibble to the very end, when any reasonable person would have simply admitted the quibble and concentrated on the meat of copernicus' post;


Don't flatter yourself; it isn't because of you. I happen to know copernicus through email. Like myself, he is also in the Seattle/Bellevue area, and we've traded emails on the topic of linguistics. I find his viewpoints to be cogent and eloquent.

Sauron

Indeed. I'm glad we got that obvious point out on the table.

Oh, I would consider the National Review as well. But having already debated this exact topic on another bulletin board system, and seen similar articles offered, I'm not expecting to find much new info in your URLs.

You have made the allegation that the ABA is left-wing and practically a liberal lobbying group. I was hoping in your opening gambit to defend that comment, that you might start out by presenting your highest quality sources - you know, those which are reasonably free of bias.

Do you have any such sources?

Or is your entire argument buttressed upon your personal conservative bias, plus the National Review?


Deflecting attention away from yourself, by pointing out "well, yah, but but but.... they did it too"? :boohoo: